or whither they shall go; for it never fails to come among the menafter them, and if the debate is but named on the outside of the greatcabin door, it becomes immediately a dispute among the officers upon thequarter-deck, the lieutenants, mates, purser, &c.; from thence it getsafore the mast, and into the cook room, and the whole ship isimmediately divided into factions and parties; every foremast man is acaptain, or a director to the captain; every boatswain, gunner,carpenter, cockswain, nay, and even the cook, sets up for a leader ofthe men; and if two of them join parties, it is ten to one but it comesto a mutiny, and perhaps to one of the two last extremities of allmutinies, viz., running away from the ship, or, what is worse, runningaway with the ship.
Our case was exactly thus, and had issued accordingly, for aught I know,if we had not been in a port where, we got immediate assistance, andthat by a more than ordinary vigour in the management too.
I have mentioned the first time when we called a council about ourvoyage at the Canaries, and how it was carried against my opinion not togo to the East Indies, but to go to the South Seas, about by Cape Horn.As the debate of this was not at all concealed, the officers of theship, viz., the two lieutenants and two mates, the purser, and others,came in, and went out, and not only heard all we said, but talked of itat liberty on the quarter-deck, and where they pleased, till it wentamong the whole ship's crew. It is true, there came nothing of all thisat that time, because almost all the votes being against my opinion, asI have said already, the ship's company seemed to join in naturally withit, and the men were so talked into the great prospects of gain tothemselves, by a voyage to the South Seas, that they looked upon me, whoought to have had the chief direction in the business, to be nobody, andto have only made a ridiculous proposal, tending to hurt them; and Iperceived clearly after this, that they looked upon me with an evil eye,as one that was against their interest; nay, and treated me with a sortof contempt too, as one that had no power to hurt them, but as one, thatif things were left to me, would carry them on a wildgoosechase theyknew not whither.
I took no notice of this at first, knowing that, in the process ofthings, I should have opportunity enough to let them know I had power tooblige them many ways; as also, that I had authority sufficient tocommand the whole ship, and that the direction of the voyage wasprincipally in me, though I being willing to do everything in a friendlyway, had too easily, and, I may say, too weakly, put that to the vote,which I had a right to have commanded their compliance with. The illconsequences of which appeared not for some time, but broke out upon theoccasion of our new measures, as will presently appear.
As soon as we had determined our voyage among ourselves in the greatcabin, the supercargo and Captain Merlotte went out upon thequarter-deck, and began to talk of it among the officers, midshipmen,&c.; and, to give them their due, they talked of it very honestly; notwith any complaint of being over-ruled, or over-persuaded, but as ameasure that was fully agreed to among us in the great cabin.
The boatswain, a blunt, surly, bold fellow, as soon as he heard of it,Very well, says he, so we are all come back into Captain Positive'sblind proposal (for so he called me); why this is the same thateverybody rejected at the Canaries; and now, because we are drivenhither by contrary winds, those winds must be a reason why we mustundertake a preposterous, ridiculous voyage, that never any sailor wouldhave proposed, and that man never went before. What, does the captainthink that we cannot find our way to the coast of America again, andbecause we have met with cross winds, we must never meet with fair ones?I warrant him, let us but go up the height of St. Helena, we will soonreach the Rio de la Plata and Port St. Julian again, and get into theSouth Seas too, as others have done before us.
The gunner took it from the boatswain, and he talks with one of themidshipmen in the same dialect. For my part, says he, I shipped myselffor the South Seas when I first came aboard the ship, and in hopes ofgood booty; and if we go thither, I know nothing can hinder us, wind andweather permitting: but this is such a voyage as no man ever attemptedbefore; and whatever the captain proposes, can have nothing in it forthe men, but horrid fatigue, violent heats, sickness, and starving.
One of the mates takes it from him, and he says as openly, I wonder whata plague the rest of the gentlemen mean; they were all against thecaptain when he started this whimsical voyage before, and now they comeall into it of a sudden, without any consideration; and so the projectof one man must ruin the most promising voyage ever yet undertaken, andbe the death of above two hundred as stout fellows as ever were togetherin one ship in this part of the world.
One of the midshipmen followed the mate, and said, We were all promisedthat another ship should be gotten, either purchased or taken, and thatthe first ship we took, should be manned and victualled out of thisship, where we were double manned, and crowded together enough to bringan infection among us, in such hot climates as we are going into; andif we were in the South Seas, we should easily buy a ship, or take aship for our purpose, almost where we would; but in all this part of theworld there is no such thing as a ship fit for an Englishman to set hisfoot in. We were promised, too, that when we got into such a ship, wethat entered as midshipmen should be preferred to offices, as we werequalified, and as our merit should recommend us. What they are going todo with us now, I cannot imagine, unless it be to turn us afore themast, when half the foremast men are dead, and thrown overboard.
The master, or pilot of the ship, heard all these things, and sent usword into the great cabin of all that passed, and, in short, assured us,that, if these things went a little farther, he was afraid they wouldcome up to a mutiny; that there was great danger of it already, and thatwe ought to apply some immediate remedy to it, or else he thought itwould be too late. He told me the particulars also, and how the wholeweight of their resentment seemed to tend to quarrelling at my command,as believing that this project of going to the East Indies was whollymine; and that the rest of the officers being a little influenced by theaccident of our being driven so far out of our way, were only biassed inthe rest by my opinion; and, as they were all against it before, wouldhave been so still, if it had not been for me; and he feared, if theywent on, they might enter into some fatal measures about me, and perhapsresolve to set me on shore in some barren uninhabited land or other, togive me my bellyful of new discoveries, as it seems some of them hadhinted, and the second mate in particular.
I was far from being insensible of the danger I was in, and indeed ofthe danger the whole voyage, ship and all, was in; for I made noquestion, but that, if their brutish rage led them to one villanousaction, they would soon go on to another; and the devil would take holdof that handle to represent the danger of their being punished for itwhen they came home; and so, as has been often the case, prompt them tomutiny against all command, and run away with the ship.
However, I had presence of mind enough to enter into prompt measures forour general safety, and to prevent the worse, in case of any attemptupon me. First, I represented the case to the rest of the gentlemen andasked if they would stand by me, and by the resolutions which we hadtaken for the voyage; then I called into our assistance the chief mate,who was a kinsman of one of our owners, a bold resolute gentleman, and apurser, who we knew was faithful to us; as also the surgeon and thecarpenter. I engaged them all to give me first their opinions whetherthey were convinced of the reasonableness of my scheme for the voyage Ihad proposed; and that they might judge for themselves, laid it allbefore them again, arguing every part of it so clearly to them, thatthey were convinced entirely of its being the most rational prospect ofthe voyage for us, of any we could go about.
When I had done this, I recommended it to them to expostulate with themen, and if possible, to keep them in temper, and keep them to theirduty; but at the same time, to stand all ready, and upon a signal whichI gave them, to come all to the steerage, and defend the great cabindoor with all the other hands, whom they could be sure of; and in themean time to be very watchful over the motions of the men, and see whatthey drove at.
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At the same time I fortified myself with the French captain, and thesupercargo, and the other captain; and by the way, all the Frenchcaptain's men were true to him, and he true to us, to a man. We thenbrought a sufficient store of ammunition and small arms into the greatcabin, and secured the steerage, as also the roundhouse, so that wecould not possibly be surprised.
There was nothing done that night, but the next morning I was informed,that the gunner and second mate were in a close cabal together, and oneor two of the midshipmen, and that they had sworn to one another, notthat they would not go the voyage as was proposed, for that might haveended in their running away, which I should not have been sorry for;but, in short, their oath was, that the ship should not go the voyage;by which I was presently to understand, that they had some measures totake to prevent my design of the voyage to the Philippines, and that,perhaps, this was to run away with the ship to Madagascar, which was notfar off.
I had,